Chicago Water Week Virtual Panel: "Smart Lake Erie Watershed - Driving Economic Development Through Innovation"

[00:00:00] Max Herzog: Welcome, everyone. Thanks so much for taking time this week to participate in Chicago Water Week. My name is Max Herzog. I'm Deputy Director of Programs and partnerships with Cleveland Water Alliance.  I'm extremely excited to moderate today's panel discussion about the Smart Lake Erie Watershed.

[00:00:37] My organization, Cleveland Water Alliance, is co-sponsoring this event with our partners at the moment, and we highly encourage folks. To check out other events at Chicago water week this week. This is a virtual event. There are other virtual and in person events taking place, touching on all different topics regarding water this week, so really encourage you to check out the current website if you want to explore some of those other events. This is a webinar style zoom meeting, so you all as attendees will not be able to directly, share your voice with us, so we really encourage you to submit questions for our panelists via the Q&A function.

[00:01:27] It's right next to the chat. So, it's easy to mix up if you submit your question to the chat, that's okay, but we will go to that Q&A function at the end 1st, for audience questions, so I encourage you to submit your thoughts there. As I mentioned, I'm Max Herzog with Cleveland water alliance, and I'm really excited to have a fantastic panel with us here today.

[00:01:49] We have Aaron Klein, director of public works for the city of Sandusky. Emily Hamilton, our innovation advocate and deal flow analyst, my colleague at Cleveland water alliance. Ken Gibbons, environmental scientist with Linotech and Kerry Caslow, an application development manager with In Situ, Incorporated.

[00:02:08] We'll learn a little more about each of these folks' work as we dive into the panel. So I'll start with just that brief introduction. But before we dive into the panel discussion, I want to turn to my colleague. Emily Hamilton for just a brief overview of the smart Lake Erie watershed. As an initiative led by Cleveland water lines, we have some framing.

[00:02:29] For our discussion. Emily,

[00:02:31] Emily Hamilton: thanks so much Max. It's a pleasure to be here today talking to all of you. I'm excited to talk about Lake Erie Smart watershed is, and how it's facilitated some. Innovation and further programming at the Cleveland water alliance, but to start out, let's talk about the regional focus of why we're landing on Lake Erie.

[00:02:56] Part of that is that we are the Cleveland water alliance, and we're located in Cleveland. Also, Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, which means it's the most bioproductive also the most biodiverse, but it's also left vulnerable to warming temperatures, some of the industrial activities and agricultural activities within the region, which makes it a good location for some of the expertise and focus that's happening along it with the Smart Lake Erie Watershed Initiative.

[00:03:35] So, Ohio has a deep and robust knowledge and history in the water sector in particular, we are the location of the very famous burning of the Cuyahoga River, which spurned the Clean Water Act in 1972, and it's also the location of the formation of the EPA. We have a really significant chunk of the water economy here in Ohio, and some very major players within that economy are located in the state of Ohio. We've had investments through the, , federal investments through the state investments and then county investments as well. And the activities that we're participating in. We are a confluence of different players and partnerships in the Ohio region.

[00:04:29] We are centrally located in a way that allows us to partner with over 200 industry partners, more than 30 utility partners and research institutions in the regions. The industry partners range from multinational corporations, all the way down to innovators in their garage with new technologies that they're looking to bring to market.

[00:05:00] So the project that we're working on, that is the smart, like, started with our interest in sensing and monitoring technology. When we asked our utility partners in the region, why there had not been large scale adoption of sensing and monitoring technology across the response was that it is cost prohibitive to have a dedicated cell line or] Wifi connectivity for every single sensor that you may want across an environmental context, so CWA went after that grant funding to create an infrastructure and a backbone of telecommunications technology across the Ohio side of the Lake Erie coastline. Our primary coverage is in Lorawan.

[00:05:58] Which stands for long range wide area network. It's perfect for sending small amounts of data, like temperature, dissolved oxygen data points, every 15 minutes or so, but we have expanded that to also include Wi Fi and cellular connectivity and presently there's over 6500 miles of connectivity across the Ohio side of the Lake Erie coastline, covering each of the counties in Ohio.

[00:06:35] Because we created this infrastructure of telecommunications activity. We also purchased commercially available sensors that we began deploying on smart buoys to make data for generalized parameters available to our stakeholders within the region. We have harbor stations, smart buoys, watershed stations all across this coastline of Ohio, so that we can begin understanding. The activities and conditions of the watershed that we live on.

[00:07:14] So, this is an image here of the connectivity across the coastline. And as we are collecting all of this data and making it actionable for our regional stakeholders, we can increase to not just the parameters of weather wave dissolved oxygen temperature, and kind of the generalized parameters of interest to our stakeholders, but increase it to specific interests, like contamination, industrial activities, heavy metals, harmful algal blooms and. Make it shareable to research partners and industry partners alike,

[00:08:04] Because this infrastructure exists and we have this kind of benchmarking system that is commercially available. Sensors deployed across Lake Erie, we're also able to open up these locations to trialing and demonstrating of more novel technologies in the water industry, which has facilitated the creation of our testbed programming.

[00:08:28] So, our test bed supports the entire life cycle of technologies that includes the hardware, the sensors that are deployed within the lake, but also AI algorithms for this data to be pushed through for predictive modeling, different types of telemetry, solar powered, gateways for Laurel, when data hosting platforms, and cyber security, all of which are create the suite of technology that enables this kind of innovation

[00:09:14] And what we're going to be talking about today a little bit further is the different types of players in this space. The technologies that are available in it and the points of view of the stakeholders who are participating. In the test bed and benefiting from it as well.

[00:09:33] Max Herzog: Thanks so much for that overview.

[00:09:34] Emily. So, hopefully for folks to whom this is a new initiative that paints some of the picture of the infrastructure that's out there and sort of starting to talk about how it's being used. But now we're going to dive a bit deeper with our panelists to explore what these different use cases are, and what the impact of the smart Lake Erie watershed is.

[00:09:54] So, the 1st question for our panelists, just to get a little better sense of where you're how you're approaching this work and the work that you do in the field. What is your role within this initiative and what impacts have you seen it have? And I'd like to start with Ken Gibbons with limb no tech talking a little bit about their role in facilitating this infrastructure.

[00:10:15] Ken Gibbons: Yeah, thanks Max and Emily. My role is kind of mostly on the infrastructure side. So I work with Emily on testing out new technologies through the test bed, implementing technologies, so helping to implement this smart light gearing sensor network. One example is the buoy that's Emily's background. I should have done a fun background like that.

[00:10:41] And then maintaining this infrastructure. You know, there is quarterly or annual maintenance that needs to be done to keep things up and running. And then as far as impacts go, I think the biggest impact I've seen is the utilization of tech by utilities and other public groups. So, you know, some of these early warning systems or water treatment plant sensors initially started off as just kind of like a research grade piece of equipment.

[00:11:22] But now this is kind of part of their operations and some more and more utilities have adopted this type of technology and kind of a secondary benefit of that is we're slowly creating a sensor network. So like Emily's graph on that and that's kind of benefited researchers.

[00:11:44] Max Herzog: Thanks, Ken. That's really helpful.

[00:11:46] And I think that, you know, integration with utilities and that use case that really backs us into sort of Aaron's role in the city of Sandusky. I'm wondering, Aaron, if you could speak a little bit about, you know, as a city that has drinking water intakes, as well as a broader interest in facilitating surface water quality, you know, what is, what is your role in this initiative?

[00:12:04] And what impacts have you seen to have from your perspective?

[00:12:08] Aaron Klein: Yeah, thank you Max and Emily and everybody that's joining, so I'm a little bit of background. I'm the director of public works in the city of Sandusky. I've been here for about 12 years. And what that means is I oversee the engineering all the capital projects, the water plant, wastewater plant, the water distribution, sewer maintenance, street department, some of those other divisions within a public works department.

[00:12:35] We're here to obviously talk about the water plant, so our facility is about a 12 to 15 MGD plant, and we supply water to 5 counties, several communities ,about 85,000  users on this water system. Looking at what Emily had shown earlier, I don't know if you guys caught it. There were 6 counties that were shown in her image and they kind of break Lake Erie down into the Western Basin, the Central Basin and the Eastern Basin and Sandusky sits in that Western Basin. And that's where the majority of the concerns regarding algal blooms and nutrient loads and those types of things would be. generated, so our intake that sits about a mile and a half offshore, it's very critical that we know what's going on out in the lake at all times.

[00:13:30] Not just from an analogy standpoint or a nutrient standpoint, but also from dissolved oxygen turbidity, anything that these buoys can monitor in real time is very, very helpful for us. We do have a secondary intake as well. That intake is near the shoreline, it's about 7 feet down and it's right off of the shoreline.

[00:13:55] You can actually step out onto it from the shoreline. So it's not in a very good situation. It's not in a very good location, but it does give us that reliability. We're working with the county on developing a 3rd intake that was recently acquired from the federal government. And that's about 5 miles east of where our current intake is.

[00:14:18] If we can get that thing operational, then we will be able to have that reliability and we will also be a little bit farther to the east, which gets us farther away from those algal blooms and those concerns that we would have with water quality. Ways that we've used this, we have operators we're a 24 hour plan, we have operators there at all times, the superintendent, the lab personnel are there during the day.

[00:14:49] And they currently log into the system. All of our operators and staff have access into the system, into the software to actually figure out what's going on in Lake Erie at our intake. The buoy is actually right at our intake. So, we've been able to get out ahead of hypoxia events. We've been able to get out ahead of algal blooms and our lab staff, although we have the sampling points within the lab.

[00:15:17] It really helps because it's getting that real time information out in the lake. You don't have to wait till the water gets into the lab, comes through the tap, take the sample, run the analysis and do all that work, which is about 30, 45 minutes, sometimes even an hour, and that's when we have staff there.

[00:15:35] If those are happening when our lab staff is not there, you know, that could even be a bigger delay. And when we've been able to catch these things, when we log into the system, we can obviously reduce that staff time. But more importantly. We can react and we can change our operations. We can increase chemical doses.

[00:15:57] We can, when we know that that event is over, we can decrease the chemical doses. There's a huge cost savings associated with having these buoys. So that's a little bit about the operational aspect of how we've used them in the past and how we continue to use them. Our staff actually logs in on a regular basis, probably I'd say about a dozen times a day, just to check and see what's going on.

[00:16:24] Max Herzog: Thanks, Aaron. That's really helpful. It's super interesting to hear about sort of the use case for these sensor networks from the perspective of a drinking water treatment plant of a municipality and thinking about. You know, managing surface water and drinking water quality for residents. I want to turn to you next Kerry, you know, as an industry leader as a source of innovation, really manufacturing and building the next generation of water quality sensors.

[00:16:48] I wonder if you could speak a little bit to how the smart Lake Erie watershed supports your efforts in situ.

[00:16:56]  Kerry Caslow: Yeah, yeah. So it is different coming from the manufacturing perspective and actually being a scientist out there on the lake and on the water body surrounding the lake. That's for sure. So one of the big things that Institute does related to the Smart Lake Erie watershed is that we actually develop a lot of the technologies that you guys will find in that watershed.

[00:17:15] So for monitoring algae blooms, whether it's algae itself or some of the effects or causes of algae as well. So like dissolved oxygen changes, pH, we have organic matter sensors. There's a wide variety of things that manufacturers develop to help you guys look at what's taking place on your body of water.

[00:17:34] So, and it's not just sensors that we develop either that manufacturers in general really, really develop either. You've got the monitoring platforms themselves with the sensors. You've got data collection tools. You've got visualization tools, you know, each manufacturer also works with scientists and other industrial partners to look at user experience requirements because we want these things to really be user friendly and kind of cost effective and, you know, all those things that go into just making everybody's lives easier because of Aaron mentioned, people are looking at this data multiple times a day.

[00:18:09] It needs to be easy to get to. It needs to be easy to use, easy to interpret so that these decisions, like what again, Aaron was talking about can be made really quickly and easily. So what impacts have we really seen, you know, the smart Lake Erie watershed have, we've been able to really figure out what, what means the most to water quality scientists on the Lake Erie watershed.

[00:18:34] So that's really important to know what the scientific research is in the region. And we do see that it's not slowing down. There's always more requests for additional sensor developments, additional technologies, like Emily mentioned earlier there are different telemetry options that are being used as well.

[00:18:51] And, you know, there's a lot of development that goes into these kind of things and seeing what the next step is in these scientific ventures that we're taking.

[00:19:02] Max Herzog: Thanks, Kerry. That's really helpful. Super interesting to hear how this infrastructure is helping sort of accelerate innovation and also.

[00:19:09] Almost cultivates that market of end users for these innovative technologies. I'd like to move now to the next question, which is really thinking about what barriers exist to sort of the full realization of the smart Lake Erie watersheds potential. And I want to turn to you 1st, Aaron. I'm thinking about barriers related to the water treatment plan and the municipal perspective.

[00:19:36] Aaron Klein: Yeah, so. Looking at our water plants, like I said, we operate the plant, but we're 12 gallons. We're in a smaller community. We have about 25,000 residents and while we're able to make those decisions, we are also looking at ways to improve that decision making in real time. A lot of times, some of the issues we have.

[00:20:06] You know, the staff might not be fully trained. They might not be able to understand exactly what they're looking at, what they're looking for in the education component of it.  For example, Ken and I were talking about the ability to hook it up to our SCADA system, but we've never actually done that.

[00:20:25] So our crews actually log in on a daily basis and look at it rather than having the SCADA alarm, you know, set an alarm off on the screen where the operator's looking at so we can know exactly what's going on. And that's really just an education thing, a training, a timing, you know, those types of, of decision making items that we really need to do.

[00:20:48] Quickly, as we're moving forward, I had talked briefly about the NASA facility or the federal facility that the county recently obtained. It would be wonderful if we could. Have a buoy at both locations, and even 1 at our current secondary intake and that we could have operational decisions, not necessarily manual.

[00:21:14] But if a buoy is reading a low D. O. Maybe we can have it automatically switch over to the other intake and automatically pull from that 1 or for having algal blooms or things like that. And You know, obviously all of this stuff is going to take dollars, the capital associated with, with buying the buoys, with creating the Intel within our SCADA system, the controls, the instrumentation, all of the equipment that we would need, those things take dollars.

[00:21:48] And unfortunately, as you're putting those dollars towards it, it's never, it's not enough. You need to make sure that you have a good enough capital budget to implement these things, but also have the patience to do it over time. And not only that, it's the security of the system. If we hook it up to SCADA, we want to make sure obviously we've got several people that are trying to hack into our systems at all times these days.

[00:22:15] So, making sure that it's secure, making sure that if we do have it on a network, that it is secure enough that it cannot be hacked into and then creating that maybe I'll get into it a little bit later, but creating that network. That's not only for our water treatment plant. But as the public works director, I can see some huge value and possibly expanding this outside of the water treatment plant, getting it into our distribution system, maybe looking at how it overflows.

[00:22:47] Might be activated during certain rain events, and if we can get communication throughout the system, throughout all of our infrastructure. You know, just the future's limitless for some for technology like this, and it's just something that, you know, the start seems to be the buoys. We're starting to work inland, but it just seems like it's something that.

[00:23:10] We could really improve or expand this technology throughout the land. Infrastructure as well.

[00:23:19] Max Herzog: Thanks, Aaron. Yeah, touching on some of those opportunities to integrate more with existing systems, expand networks, and really bring sort of the workforce along with it. And obviously the cost also to see what that makes a lot of sense and helps us kind of get some insight into that user perspective on what are the challenges and sort of really advancing this forward. I'm wondering, Ken, you know, more from the perspective of someone who's really facilitating the deployment and maintenance of this infrastructure, you know, what sort of barriers do you see as you're trying to advance your work?

[00:23:51] Aaron Klein: I think barriers, or I'm kind of thinking of this as kind of the next frontier as kind of Aaron mentioned of moving inland. We over the years, we've gotten a lot more sophisticated and are like in Lake monitoring and in Lake monitor network. I mean, through the Smart Lake Erie initiative, there were nine buoys deployed, a series of shoreline stations, and we were able to kind of rapidly deploy that and know what parameters would benefit, you know, different groups, communities, researchers.

[00:24:28] And for parameters where a sensor doesn't exist, I think we have a decent pipeline going of communicating that to the manufacturer of, you know, what are people interested in seeing and communicating how these things get deployed? What features we're looking for in these sensors. Now, there's a shift inland of looking at, you know, the water quality in the lake as a result of things running off both the city areas, urban areas and rural areas and figuring kind of new flow of how to install more sensors. What parameters are of most interest to groups and provides the most useful data. And how do we implement a dense enough network where we're able to collect data? That's really useful for both land managers, water quality managers and the public, and I think Emily's graph earlier of that map showing, you know, maybe a few dots going to more dots. You'll notice a lot of the dots were kind of on the land, understanding what's happening in the streams and tributaries.

[00:25:40] Max Herzog: Yeah, that's really helpful. So, I mean, it can be thought of as a barrier or an opportunity of thinking, like, how, how does this framework that we've developed that.

[00:25:47] A lot of the applications right now are on the open lake or the near shore, the coastline. How do we really expand that into the watersheds to start to address some of those. You know, land management, industrial management, urban management questions that obviously heavily impact what happens in the lake and heavily impact our communities for water quality.

[00:26:07] Thanks Ken. Now we'll move, move into our, our last, you know, facilitated question and again, encourage folks to be dropping any questions that come up throughout the presentation into the Q&A. We should have some time here at the end to address them. Really looking towards the future, what do you see the future of the Smart Lake Erie watershed look like?

[00:26:28] You know, in your ideal situation. How does this initiative and this set of technologies and this approach really ultimately impact our region? And then how do we try to get there? , I like to turn again, maybe 1st to Aaron to speak from the perspective of a city.

[00:26:47] Aaron Klein: Yeah, so from the future of this type of technology, I feel like I think we can all relate if the technology is working, it kind of goes into the background and it's only known when it fails and you can't log into your system.

[00:27:08] So, I'd like to take a little bit of a different approach to this and kind of see where I can see this type of technology pushing the future and pushing where we can go. I look at the worldwide water crisis that we have and just see the Great Lakes as a huge opportunity, the opportunity to have reliability on water and pushing that reliability into economic development, bringing manufacturing, bringing other types of industries to this region, the whole Great Lakes region, I could obviously get into how important clean water is to the craft beer industry, but I probably would want to take the afternoon off. So I'll stick to the manufacturing side. So the city of Sandusky sits halfway between Cleveland and Toledo we supply water for 5 different counties.

[00:28:03] That 3rd intake that is in existence right now has 13 miles of agricultural land between it and the city of Sandusky. That's developable land between right on 990, the turnpike. It has water sewer power. There's a lot of infrastructure there that a manufacturer could rely on very readily. They could look for screen water, treated water.

[00:28:31] They'd be able to tie in, put their own pps into that treatment or to that pump station. And I looked at Intel going east of Colbus. All manufacturing needs water, whether it's screened water or potable water, they need reliability on water. If they do not have that, their operations shut down.

[00:28:51] Their suppliers, all those big manufacturers have those little offshoot suppliers. Why not somewhere in and around the Great Lakes where there's water quality and reliability and value, health and safety, I think most people know the city of Sandusky because of Cedar Point. Or maybe they just know Cedar Point, but the fact that we have millions of visitors on an annual basis come to the city over the summer, tourism is huge.

[00:29:23] If we can tell where the fishing is best, or we can tell people where to swim, or, you know, where boating is the best, you know, those types of things. That is huge for the tourism industry and those economic dollars that we can put forward. And as part of, of the city of Sandusky and the director of public works, one of the benefits that I have is I oversee all of those divisions that I had talked about earlier.

[00:29:50] So knowing where to put the dollars that we have for whether it's wastewater treatment or water treatment or CSO reductions, those types of things is very important to me, but it's also important to look at green infrastructure, sustainability, our urban forest. And 1 of the things that we've done recently over the last 7 years, as we've worked with ODNR the Ohio EPA, corps of engineers, fish and wildlife, all those agencies.

[00:30:22] To develop coastal wetlands. That coastal wetlands is designed to beneficially reuse , dredge materials, create fish, habitat, water quality, those things. And, and the point of it is to reduce those nutrients, the turbidity, create clarity in the water, increase the fish populations, all of those things that were, give you that economic reliability and also that water quality that you need to have that reliability at the water treatment plant and for the tourism industry and all of those other industries that we have. And actually, it's 1 of the 1st coastal wetlands along the Great Lakes. And we actually have 1 of those buoys that Ken was talking about a little bit ago, those research grade buoys that actually monitor for those nutrients and turbidity.

[00:31:19] And we have people going out, taking samples on a regular basis. So, you know, it's not just an approach of where the future is at the water plant, because that's endless, but it's a future of how to get all of our industries and all of our infrastructure and everything communicating. So we can have a comprehensive approach to water quality and water treatment.

[00:31:47] Max Herzog: Thanks here and yeah, covering a lot there and I think really tying together some important stories of the role of water quality in economic development and community health across a variety of parameters, you know, thinking about tourism, thinking about industry that's really helpful to kind of connect those pieces.

[00:32:06] I wonder Kerry more from the industry perspective, you know, what, where do you see the future of the smartly Kerry watershed going?

[00:32:13] Kerry Caslow: Yeah, it's a really interesting question to think about. So for me, I really see the future of the Smart Lake Erie watershed using more sensors and science to really connect our water bodies to those who use them better.

[00:32:24] So I really appreciate the diversity of the studies of the ways that the data is being used, you know, by so many different people across the whole lake there, you know, I've seen that these studies are really drastically increasing and not just the data, but they're also drastically increasing the different technologies that are used and that desire for more to be developed.

[00:32:45] I think Ken is probably super excited to get as many different technologies on the lake as he possibly can. Right? So, with that, it's really pushing developers to become a lot more creative with their offerings and also driving again that better easy use for better cost effectiveness. Because, you know, with data, of course, comes a cost.

[00:33:05] Nothing in life is free. Right? But we really. Want to get as much out of our sensors and our deployment platforms as we can into the future. I think that you're going to see more sensors being developed to really measure the drivers and some of the effects of climate change. So you know, you, of course, have the basic things like pH and dissolved oxygen, but maybe you're going to see more bacteria specific sensors.

[00:33:30]  I don't know. There's a lot out there that there's requests for monitoring things from, you know, sewage outfalls, or for agricultural runoff, industrial runoff, stormwater runoff, you know, all the things that Ken and Erin have kind of alluded to. There's so many requests for specific sensors that sometimes it's hard to really grasp all the ideas and say, here's one sensor for everybody that's going to cover all of these things.

[00:33:55] So I think you'll see a lot more technologies related to specific things. Things that they, you know, users are really interested in going into the future. So, I think you'll also see a lot of sensors developed to look at some of these emerging contaminants. I mean, we've all heard about PFAS and PFOS in the news a lot lately.

[00:34:15] There's big lead initiatives and things like this. So, you know, who's to say that sensors won't come out for those? Kind of things to track where, you know, pipes need to be replaced sooner than later. And these kinds of things, again, telemetry options are always changing all the time. I mean, just think about your phones in general, and how much, you know, telecommunications from a personal standpoint has changed from, you know, the 1990s into today's time.

[00:34:43] I mean, it's just kind of crazy to think about all that. So, to think that we've progressed so far in such a short period of time, it's really interesting to think where we're maybe going to go in just the next five years and into the 10 year next 10 years to, and with that, we're really going to have to look at, at the data management side too, because with all of this data, we've got to find new ways to handle it.

[00:35:06] Right? You're not going to necessarily be able to hire. Two or three people look at all of this data that we're collecting and really think through what it is that we're looking at there's gonna probably be some kind of AI algorithm, you know, some people are gonna have to build those things. 

[00:35:24] It's going to require a lot to keep up with how we manage these water bodies going into the future. And I'm very excited to be part of that and see where it goes.

[00:35:33] Max Herzog: Thanks, Kerry. Yeah, really exciting to hear, you know, the level of engagement that you're seeing now, and you're hoping to see in the future between, you know, these end users in industry and government and in communities and folks in industry that are taking those needs and really working to develop the solutions and then.

[00:35:50] Having this infrastructure to help, you know, implement and scale them you know, Emily, I'll turn to you really to wrap us up here for my questions, at least, and, you know, get your perspective as someone who's really. You know down in the trenches, so to say, with Cleveland Waterline sort of facilitating the integration between these different technologies and these different players.

[00:36:11] Where do you really see this work going into the future?

[00:36:16] Emily Hamilton: You know, I think that Kerry teed it up really very nicely for me and that the technologies that we're using right now are. Are being adopted and integrated into the daily operations of stakeholders within the regions. So I think the future looks like broadening our capabilities around the contaminants that we're able to view in real time.

[00:36:41] The responses that we get from technology for microbiological contamination, early warning systems for harmful algal blooms, heavy metal sensing, things like that. But also, how do we do the parameters that we're currently that we're currently censoring for cheaper and more efficiently and with lower power and with fewer maintenance needs so that they can be adopted more broadly, not just regionally, but globally and how we can really create.

[00:37:14] Recreate this kind of infrastructure that we have here on Lake Erie on more surface water bodies and how we can kind of bring this effort more broadly across this region across the U. S. because those concerns are going to vary, but all in all, we all kind of know what the basic concerns are here in there.

[00:37:38] Additionally, because we have this infrastructure with benchmarking through the smart Lake Erie initiative and the test bed. We are understanding what a lot of the concerns are regionally and spinning that out into testbeds for intervention technologies, our ability to sense the problems has actually outpaced our ability to solve some of them.

[00:38:05] We can see things now in magnitudes that give us an insight into the kind of magnitude of issues that we have, and how we can utilize this data to inform the market about other types of technologies that we need and also create systems for piloting and testing and trialing and developing those intervention technologies as well.

[00:38:38] The smart Lake Erie watershed is an excellent format for the beginnings of that, the insurance that we have to cover those deployments can then be utilized to cover, you know, custom pilots in industrial context, or you know, when there are issues of particular interest to the market, we can inform innovators that this is what we are trying to solve for.

[00:39:08] This is what we have money for. This is what we have an opportunity for. And this is why we need solutions. And it's also created really. Robust channel for deal flow where innovators are coming together and we're getting a snapshot of what's available on the market, who the players are, what the major issues are, and also gives us.

[00:39:34] Some credibility and our ability to test and help commercialize and bring to market different solutions. I think that the work that we're doing specifically with current and our partners with current in Chicago, they recently won a grant for renew. That's the possibility of, I think, 160Million dollars over the course of 10 years.

[00:40:00] It's a, is it a 10 state initiative through in this region, and that CWA is excited to participate in and we'd like to leverage this infrastructure that we already have this deal flow with these innovators that we already have towards those efforts and work collaboratively with industry partners, like carry and can and also stakeholders like Aaron.

[00:40:28] Max Herzog: Thanks Emily, I think that really wraps up a lot of really important content thinking about looking into the future how the smart Lake Erie watershed accelerates innovation, and how we really start to expand this model into industry intervention technologies, and how we leverage the platform.

[00:40:46] Leverage it as a platform for broader collaborations, like renew. Thanks so much for sharing those thoughts. I'd like to turn now to questions from our audience. We have a couple here in the Q&A already, and we may have time for 1 or 2 more. So please do feel free to drop them in the chat here as well.

[00:41:06] We have 1 question here. What are the most pressing problems in commercial industrial developments and operations? Or that commercial industrial developments and operations posed to healthy watersheds and water networks. What can be done and what solutions should be implemented to better be better water stewards.

[00:41:27] , Emily, would you want to speak briefly to some of our work around sensors and then be happy to open it up also to you know, Aaron, I know you're involved in surface water management in your area as well.

[00:41:41] Emily Hamilton: Absolutely. I would be, I would be helpful. Happy to speak to that a little bit. So I think no one will be shocked by.

[00:41:51] The things that I'm about to mention as high priorities in terms of contaminants. Due to industrial and agricultural activities, nutrient loading that creates harmful algal blooms, microplastics runoff from just like commercial activities, citizen reactivities, consumer activities, and then heavy metals and PFAS and PFOS from industrial activities.

[00:42:18] Are all of high concerns to our watershed, the development of sensors for those things is still very much a space where innovation is readily accepted and available oil sensors as well. I'm sorry. I should have mentioned oil spill sensors as well. There is room for innovation in that space, and it's kind of noisy at the moment.

[00:42:47] People are rushing towards it. In the sensing and monitoring. Applications as well as solution intervention solutions around it. And I think in order to be better water stewards pushing forward on industry that is focused on circular manufacturing operations, resource recovery from a lot of those operations upstream solutions that are understanding where the problem areas are and preventing it from getting to the lake from the watershed are all going to be of high interest. And there's certainly a lot of room for those innovations to take place.

[00:43:32] Max Herzog: Absolutely, and a few things CWA is doing to play in those spaces are, you know, collaborating with the Department of natural resources to scope out what the design of an oil and chemical spill warning network could look like as those sensors are refined and developed to be able to get those out in the environment.

[00:43:48] And then also we're collaborating with Case Western Reserve University on a sustainable manufacturing initiative to really partner with some of those industry folks and look at. What the water component of a sustainable manufacturer really needs to look like moving into the future. I'm wondering, Aaron, from your perspective, if you have thoughts about, you know, the, the, the threats or risks that commercial industrial development brings and what we need to do really to, to push forward as better water stewards.

[00:44:18] Aaron Klein: Absolutely, and I'd like to start by saying that. You know, there have been a lot of huge strides done in the past to improve water quality. Now, as Emily touched on earlier, the clean water act, the Cuyahoga River catching on fire, those types of things. Those are things that happened a long time ago.

[00:44:43] And I saw a post recently that there were steelhead trout that were recently re released back into the Cuyahoga River, which was extremely exciting for the region. And so there have been a lot of strides, but to the point of the question, yeah, there's definitely a lot more that can be done. And to me, there's a lot of stuff that can be done on the ground, but there's also things that need to be done to resolve competing issues.

[00:45:12] There's people that still say climate change is not a thing or people that say that. We'll argue no matter what. Some of those people we're not going to get to, but you need those partners. You need people that are going to help push through the issues. And things that can really help that are the data, the knowledge, the information that you can gather from a smart technology from the system.

[00:45:36] If we can get this information, and we can get it out there, and we can have a comprehensive network that shows exactly how things work together, and I'm talking a comprehensive approach, like I said earlier about the, the urban forest and sustainability and, and, you know, the heat pockets and cities and those types of things.

[00:45:55] All of that stuff plays into the water community. It's not just commercial and industrial anymore. It's agriculture and everybody else that we all need to be on the same page. And it's getting everybody together. And I will say that I've seen a lot of advancement in that collaboration recently.

[00:46:14] You know, with the treatment processes and the technology that we have for wastewater treatment and those byproduct streams in the commercial industrial developments. Having that flexibility that a technology like this can create will certainly allow us to make those decisions. A lot more quickly, and maybe we can push the regular, the regulatory agencies to help with those types of things.

[00:46:39] So, you know, the dollar is king, and if we can get the funding to make sure that we can implement these processes to create that data and knowledge, I think that would be hugely important.

[00:46:56] Max Herzog: Thanks, Aaron. Yeah, really helpful and insightful to hear this. And, you know, I think, as you referenced towards the end, you know, obviously, there's always gonna be a role for policy for advocacy in these conversations.

[00:47:07] But I think, as you've heard, there is a real important role for technology as well. We have another question here thanking us for the presentation. Y'all have been incredibly informative and also asking what the biggest needs and opportunities for workforce and economic development are you know.

[00:47:27] Maybe from an industry perspective, Kerry would love to hear your thoughts on sort of the needs from workforce development and Aaron from the utility municipality side as well. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

[00:47:38]I have one more too. That I thought of while we were talking and it's something that you guys at Cleveland Water Alliance actually do really well.

Yeah. So I, I think from my perspective, there's two big components to what we've been talking about today.

[00:47:45] So first, you're going to have the scientist component where you're going to need somebody who goes out to the field to collect all the data and follows the good scientific processes to get this data that's going to provide a baseline for now and, you know, kind of be the baseline for the future to see whether the changes that we're making in our processes are for the better or for worse.

[00:48:03] And then second, I think we're also going to see. A growing need for people on the technological side. So developing these new sensors. So like the engineers, the computer scientists, the software engineers, these kinds of things, but we're going to need to develop additional sensor technologies like we've talked about here today.

[00:48:22] And we're also going to need to develop things like artificial intelligence algorithms to, you know, process all of this data. So whether it's Machine learning or whatever, whatever word of the data that you want to use for these kind of things. We're going to need, you know, some smart computer folks to help develop that to carry us into the future.

[00:48:40] As we collect more data.

[00:48:42] Max Herzog: Absolutely, Aaron, do you want to chime in from the, from the municipality perspective?

[00:48:47] Aaron Klein: Yes, to me, we have plenty of very capable and intelligent people. But , the fact still remains that a lot of people are moving away from the region and away from the Midwest. And having the quality of people that we have, we just need more of them and we need to keep them here and we need to figure out ways to make sure that.

[00:49:16] The people that Kerry was just talking about those, those professionals. On the technology side can stay, but also the operators at the water plant that are interested in making a career out of it and having those. Those wages that can compete with the California's and the other places that Texas places that people are moving to, you know, we have some people that are extremely passionate growing up and living on the Great Lakes.

[00:49:44] And they absolutely love the environment here and it's a matter of keeping those people here and keeping that passion going so that they do show that interest in wanting to join a water utility. Like what we have. 

[00:50:00]  Kerry Caslow: I have one more too. That I thought of while we were talking and it's something that you guys at Cleveland Water Alliance actually do really well. We need the communicators out there too. We need, you know, people that work with the press or that just have an interest in writing about things or doing video. We need people to communicate the science to others in ways that everybody can understand what it is that we're doing and why it's so important.

[00:50:24] There's plenty of people out there that say, no don't use the lake ever again. The water's awful. It's awful. But, you know, really, there's another side of the story to that. Yeah, maybe after a storm event, the water isn't the world's best because of all the things that have run off, but we need somebody to tell the story to that.

[00:50:39] The water is okay. When all of that stuff is kind of settled out. It's safe to recreate and it's safe to use. It's safe for drinking all these kind of things. We need people to tell the full story about our water money.

[00:50:50] Max Herzog: Yeah, I love that Kerry. And I think 1 of the things that we like to try and emphasize that Cleveland water lines is that, you know, not only.

[00:50:57] Is our water safe in a lot of cases in a really exciting place for recreation and an opportunity for industry as Aaron has spoken to, but it's an opportunity for innovation, right? Like, companies like in situ develop these solutions and through the smart, like, very watershed. We're creating this context in which some really exciting new things can be built.

[00:51:17] And I don't think, you know, here in the digital age, folks often think of the environment as sort of that incubator of innovation that I think it can be. We have another question here from the city here asking how other organizations in the U. S. and the world are learning from our leading effort.

[00:51:34] And how do we seeing it spread? Further,  I'm wondering Emily, if you might want to speak a little bit to our interactions with kind of pure clusters across the world and. I'm not sure if you have thoughts on this, but feel free to jp in. I don't don't want to leave you out of the conversation here by any means.

[00:51:52] Emily Hamilton: Absolutely. So C. W. A. has had really exciting opportunities to travel internationally and meet with peer organizations in Europe and in Asia and talk to those clusters about their interest in innovation and exporting their solutions because the U. S. is a really, really exciting market in their mind.

[00:52:20] And so we are operating very much under the assumption that we want to be a place that's possible for them to land where they will have resources where they can penetrate the U. S. market, but also contribute to the regional economy here and not just export their solutions in a way where it's extractive, but where it's also investment here.

[00:52:41] We have the knowledge about the types of solutions that we're looking for, and we're creating pathways. And resources that support those types of activities, and then can also be. By directional where we're informing them of what we have seen locally and what we are seeing regionally and how those learnings can be applied to fresh surface water bodies globally.

[00:53:11] Certainly our European partners are seeing many of the same issues that we see here and there's collaborative learning happening in those ways. Regionally I think that our best friends are the utilities and the research institutions and how we're all collaborating collectively to create a network and a practice around facilitating stewardship or are the beautiful resources that we have in the Great Lakes region.

[00:53:43] . And anywhere that you see fresh surface water, you're going to see some of these challenges, anywhere that you see industry, you're going to see some of these challenges. 

[00:53:57] The learnings can be brought Broadly, and the systematic approach that CWA has taken is. Replicable, I think, in short.

[00:54:10]  Ken Gibbons: Absolutely. Just to add on, you know, like Emily said, the issues we're facing in Lake Erie, you know, they're happening everywhere in other countries, other parts of the U. S. I think one part of this effort that's been really great is, you know, as we present what we're doing, talk with groups from other regions, other countries, we can see how they're handling the issues.

[00:54:37] But in a lot of cases, they're learning a lot of how we're sensing and want to replicate this. Elsewhere, it's been a really exciting experience because of that, especially bringing in other technologies like this, when it was typically thought of as. I, O. T, like a smart factory, smart home using it in this application of a smart lake is kind of novel.

[00:55:07] Max Herzog: Absolutely, yeah, we hear a lot of folks talking about, you know, the smart cities, but thinking about smart regions and smart regions through the lens of the environment is really interesting piece to be able to share in those conversations. We have another question here, and it may be our last, depending on how long it takes to respond.

[00:55:26] But considering the cost for long term maintenance, how do you equitably ensure the access to this data for everyone? And not just those of the resources to pay for it. I can imagine small nonprofits versus industry tension, wanting to use this data for regulatory purposes, lawsuits, et cetera. I can speak to this a little bit.

[00:55:45] This is certainly an issue that we're working to try and navigate now at Cleveland water lines. You know, we've been able to stand up this infrastructure largely through initial investments from the federal government from the state of Ohio. So, thinking about that long term operational maintenance plan is something that.

[00:56:00] You know, it is a real challenge, and it's something that we're working on now. I think a lot of it does actually look like building these relationships with institutional users, like, the city of Sandusky and industrial partners, like, in situ to figure out what it takes to sustain, have many different groups with a interest in the infrastructure to sustain it, and thinking about how, how those data can be delivered to those folks that it's a value add for and try and establish those financial relationships while also trying to make key data available to communities is a difficult 1 to navigate 1 of the things that we've been able to do at Cleveland water lines to try and address.

[00:56:39] This is to work with local water quality monitoring groups through the Lake Erie volunteer science network and leverage some of the technology that we're piloting and demonstrating. In the smart lake, to create standardized approaches for communities to monitor their own local water quality for their own.

[00:56:57] You know, advocacy and also direct management activities. You know, we see water conservation districts, waterkeeper organizations, and friends of groups. , you know, really taking action to talk to landowners or implement restoration projects in their communities based on these data. , you know, our role at Cleveland Water Lines will never be to sort of advocate or bring any sort of legal elements into this.

[00:57:23] We're really about supplying the technology to those folks that need it so that they can figure out sort of the next steps from their perspectives. So, we're here at the end of our time now, I just want to take a moment to really thank our panelists here today for sharing their perspectives and spending the time with us in conversation today.

[00:57:43] Really appreciate the folks as well who took the time to participate.

[00:57:53] As participants, and I want to just take a moment here as we're closing out and wishing y'all goodbye to share this slide, you know, folks, if folks want to learn more about this work, you can visit our website at Cleveland water lines dot org. And you're also welcome to reach out by email if you have further questions for our panelists, or, you know, want to have further conversation about any of these topics.

[00:58:16] Please do feel free to reach out.